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If you should find yourself falsely accused and facing prison time or worse -- in prison serving time for a crime you did not commit or for a crime you committed but received an excessively harsh sentence -- you'll need a good attorney. Almost as much as an attorney, however, you may need social activists who understand social media to take up your cause. That's what the Gray-Haired Witnesses and other activist groups have done for two sisters, Gladys and Jamie Scott. They've taken up the cause of seeing the women freed from prison.
They will fast, and according to their press release, they will also:
... appear at the Department of Justice and the White House in Washington, DC on June 21, 2010, calling upon the nation to exercise an authentic system of justice in the case of Gladys and Jamie Scott and all other women who have been incarcerated wrongly and egregiously over-sentenced, punishing and destroying our families and children. Among their demands is freedom for the Scott Sisters and that an Inspection and Observation Team enter the Pearl, MS prison where Jamie Scott is being held.
Based on a list posted at Scribd, more than 50 groups and individuals stand with them to champion the Scott sisters. What happened to these sisters that would motivate this kind of action?
Writing at The Black Commentator in 2008 about the first time she heard of the sisters, legal analyst Nancy R. Lockhart says she was working for Jesse Jackson's organization in Chicago in 2005 while earning a Masters in Jurisprudence. That is where she received a letter intended for Jackson that changed her life:
I will never forget the frigid, Chicago morning when I opened a letter from Mrs. Evelyn Rasco, a mother and widow. ... she had written Rainbow/PUSH for 11 years, without a response. ... this time (she) wrote Congressman Jackson in a plea to get the letter to his father’s (Rev. Jackson) office. The letter was hand delivered (and about) ... her two daughters ... serving double life terms each, in ... Mississippi, for armed robbery.
Now Lockhart strives to free Rasco's daughters, the Scott sisters.
Author of the book Inheriting the Trade, Thomas Norman DeWolf, posted information about the case at his website, opening with this narrative of the day's events leading up to the sisters' arrest:
On Christmas Eve in 1993 Jamie and Gladys Scott left a mini-mart near their home in Scott County, Mississippi. Their car broke down. They hitched a ride from two young men, one of whom they knew. Later that evening the two men were robbed at gunpoint by three teenagers in another car. The robbers took an estimated $11 from the two young men. No one was hurt. Police accused the Scott sisters of setting the victims up.
Norman writes, as have many others, that the Scott sisters had "no criminal record."
After similar introductions to their story around the Net, the saga of Gladys and Jamie Scott becomes more complicated with plot twists to rival a Dickens novel. Everywhere, activists websites and bloggers tell of the Scott sisters' plight. The crux of disbelief is that these women are serving double life terms for a crime of which not only do they continue to maintain their innocence, and for which -- even if they had committed the robbery -- the sentence seems excessively cruel, compared to sentences for worse crimes we hear of daily.
At Mother Jones, blogger James Ridgeway repeats, "no one was hurt and the take was $11."
As I wrote back in March, this unwarranted life sentence is at risk of becoming a death sentence for Jamie Scott, who is gravely ill, due to the care she is receiving at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) in Pearl. Since we first covered the story, Jamie’s condition has, if anything, grown still more critical.
Jamie Scott's kidney failure appears to have been the catalyst for the recent surge in attention to the case, and Ridgeway's post provides an excerpt from one of Jamie Scott's letters about conditions at the prison where she receives dialysis.
They use unlawful punishments to try to shut us up. I need help. I need a inmate to help me, but for some reason they will not allow me to move with my sister, so she can help me... My sister [Gladys Scott] and I were housed together for over ten years and not once have we ever caused any problem. We were split up because in 2003 the
